Phase resetting in neural oscillators as a component of circuit analysis

Recordings of the membrane potential from a bursting neuron were used to reconstruct the phase resetting curve (PRC) for a limited set of perturbations. These perturbations were inhibitory synaptic conductance pulses able to shift the membrane potential below the most hyperpolarized level attained in the free running mode. We used a delay embedding method to unfold the limit cycle attractor. For the pulse amplitudes we studied, resetting was independent of amplitude of the perturbation but increased linearly with pulse duration. The predicted and the experimental PRCs show satisfactory agreement. The method was applied to only one pulse per cycle, but our results suggest it could easily be generalized to accommodate multiple inputs, and may ultimately aid us in the analysis of circuits that contain neural oscillators.